The present invention relates to a jack which can be used, for example, as the connector for a telephone.
The conventional connector for a telephone comprises a modular plug and a modular jack. The modular jack is installed on the wall of a room or on the body of the telephone so that it is connected to the modular jack installed at the end of a cable, serving as the connector for enabling the telephone to be connected to an external line.
FIG. 1 shows an example of the use of such jack, wherein a modular jack 2 is mounted on the body wall of a telephone 1. A printed-circuit board 3 is installed in the telephone 1, and cords 4 led out from the modular jack 2 are connected to the printed-circuit board 3 through a connector 5.
As shown in FIG. 2, the modular jack 2 comprises an insulating body 10 made from a synthetic resin material, terminals 11 fitted in the insulating body 10, and wire contacts 14 assembled unitarily with the respective terminals 11 for engagement with contact pieces 13 of the modular plug 12.
More particularly, a plug insertion hole 10A is provided in the front end of the insulating body 10 so that cords 15 and 16 can be connected electrically to each other by inserting the plug 12 into the plug insertion hole 10A to cause the contact pieces 13 of the plug 12 to come into contact with the wire contacts 14 of the jack.
In the case of the conventional modular jack, for example, a conductive wire spring 14 of phosphor bronze is clamped together with the cord 15 into the terminal 11 by pressing as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3; each terminal 11 supporting the cord 15 and the wire contact 14 is fitted into a terminal insertion hole 17 in the insulating body 10 as shown in FIGS. 2 and 4; and the wire contact 14 is bent towards the inside of the plug insertion hole 10A, thus assembling the modular jack.
Thus, in the case of the conventional modular jack, an extra step of assembly work for clamping the cord 15 and the wire contact 14 to the terminal 11 by pressing is required, and this is a disadvantage.
Furthermore, the wire contact 14 taking the form of a spring, is manufactured from phosphor bronze which is required to be thoroughly and heavily gold-plated, and this makes the wire contact costly.
As a solution to this problem, it is possible to first fix the spring wires (not plated), which are to serve as the wire contacts 14, to the terminals 11 so that the spring wires can only partially be gold-plated; however, when attempting to provide partial gold plating to the spring wires in a state where the terminals 11 are regularly arranged, the consumption of gold cannot be reduced so much as expected, because the spring wires to serve as wire contacts 14 cannot be arranged at small intervals, since the diameter of the terminal 11 is relatively large compared to the spring wire, and this adversely affects the gold plating efficiency.